Well, that was an ordeal that ended up taking much longer than expected. It was the same old story as the rest of the game, though: lots of running around while the plot made logical leaps unsupported by anything preceding them, oftentimes contradicting earlier twists in the process. There were lots of fights against pathetic enemies followed up by bosses that ranged from equally pathetic to outright sadistic. Lots of someone saying something totally crazy and everyone else just being like, “Yep, that checks out!” As always (for Lost Sphear and other games so full of misery that they demand company, at least), there will be spoilers below, including video of the two possible endings. Because you really should save your money on this one.

Busywork

I’ve totally lost track of the chronology of most of these videos, mostly because this part of the game is an indistinct blur. It’s kind of funny for a game so heavily focused on memories and feelings to be forgettable and leave me feeling nothing but numb. Whatever the order is, there’s a whole lot of busywork required to reach the actual ending; once the party finally escaped that world they were trapped in, it dawned on them that the only way to beat the scientist dick is to fly to the moon and confront him there. Because reasons. Some fuel needs to be fetched first, so everyone has to go find some magically destructive stuff, and that means crawling through a mine. It was a mistake to stop the recording when I did, though, because it ends with a random gimmick: after you beat the boss, you have to sneak past a bunch of enemies without engaging them because they explode and it’d create a chain reaction. After the game told me this, it threw me into combat with one of them automatically, which is a little counter-intuitive, but whatever. I managed to avoid any further fights, so it was fine. It’s pretty stupid to create a semi-stealth sequence where combat is discouraged when fights are initiated by hitting an invisible circle around an enemy rather than touching them, though. Those things don’t mesh.

More busywork

That convenient ancient weapon we used to beat the boss before the fake credits required a convenient power source that the scientist dick left behind, which made enough sense that I didn’t feel the need to bring it up, but it turns out that the moon has an even more powerful shield and that weapon alone isn’t enough to pierce it. Good thing, then, that Secret Prince happens to have an identical power source. The game tries to explain this away by claiming that it was scientist dick’s backup just in case, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for him to have built that backup in a different kingdom on the other side of the planet. All of this is just a lazy pretext for an emotional moment that builds up to nothing (“oh, I’m dying, be better than me son… nevermind, I’m going to make a full recovery!”) and extra running around so that Lost Sphear can really pad itself out. Eventually, though, they reach the moon.

I’m neutral on losing artifacts

You know that part at the end of Final Fantasy 8 where you lose all of your abilities and have to unlock them through boss fights? Lost Sphear’s moon seems to take cues from that, as all of the artifacts you’ve relied on throughout the game (in my case, to help restore HP/MP/VP after battles) don’t work when you first arrive. You have to run through this labyrinthine area looking for scientist dick’s helpers, now mindless zombie memory things, and beat them up to unlock artifacts from certain regions. These fights are just rehashes of earlier boss fights, so they’re not too much trouble. I missed a scientist without realizing it, but managed to unlock all of the important artifacts and decided not to waste my time looking for him.

Let’s wrap this trash up

You know the drill: stupid dialogue, then getting crushed by the boss. I actually did surprisingly well here, though, as I only lost my party to an irritating spell that he spams over and over when his final form is near death. I was one or two hits away from winning here, then. Oh, and there’s a lot of dialogue pre-fight. Blah blah blah, resist me at your peril, blah blah blah. There’s one thing in particular that I noticed, however: main character Kanata is explained to have been the creator of the Fade Realm (that place I referred to as the memory world/world of memories in the last log). This shakes his confidence to create a contrived moment of drama that can be resolved through friendship and solidarity. What truly interests me is what comes after, when it’s explained that the ancient king party member was sent into this world after being “lost” in his time period despite Kanata creating the world when he was a child. Think about that; a child in the modern era unconsciously created a world and defied the time period he was in to send an ancient king into that created world, again unconsciously. That means we’re dealing with time travel and all of the plot holes that arise from it. Granted, it explains why the king managed to be restored while other “lost” ancient people are simply gone and supplanted by other cultures, but giving the main character time travel powers opens up a pretty large Pandora’s box of questions. Why not learn to harness that power and send scientist dick into the Fade Realm before he becomes dangerous? Etcetera. The logic was already tenuous to the point of being nonexistent, but this is just haphazard plot-holery.

What the hell are you doing, Lost Sphear?

Ending number 1

I was over it, so I went back and further upgraded my weapons and armor. There’s enough spritnite at this point in the game that I could grind out sublimations and break the game in numerous interesting ways (too little too late, but an appreciated bit of depth nonetheless), but that would require playing Lost Sphear even longer. Not an option. Basically, I used vulcosuits to pad everyone’s stats a little and eke out a win. Then you’re given a choice: the moon is collapsing, and Lumina pretty much wants to sacrifice herself to fix it and the world below. It’s not the first time she’s tried to fix everything by sacrificing herself, though, so my first instinct was to stop her from being stupid and self-destructive. The game then gave me an ending that more or less told me that this was the wrong decision and that the world was doomed.

This is my canon ending, because this world sucks.

Ending number 2

You get the second ending by wandering off and letting Lumina become merged with the moon to fix everything, or something to that effect. I don’t even care anymore. Point is, the world is magically fixed just in time for Kanata to have no one to enjoy it with. I appreciate the cruelty of this “good guys finish last” ending, but my heart will always be set on the complete annihilation of every last being in this awful world.

Oh! Speaking of the world, I never mentioned its name, did I? It’s Gaiterra. As in, “Gaia” and “Terra” (both traditional jRPG world names) smashed together into an awkward portmanteau. I regret missing that red flag and wasting my time with this.